In Kellys paintings, even the things that arent there . . . are there. So this empty Bandstand teems with a sense of unseen presence. Playwright Enid Bagnold wrote in a letter to Kelly that he painted "with a false and true perspective an indication that all might slip sideways and show what the ghosts and bodies . . . are really like . . . the unheard talk between one age and another . . . " For that reason, critic Herbert Read preferred the term "super-realism" rather than surrealism for Kellys work. In short, there's far more...

During the early period of Mexican independence, many American immigrants had settled in Texas, then a part of Coahuila y Tejas. In 1835, this group rebelled, largely against the "Napoleon of the West", Antonio de Padua Maria Severino Lopez de Santa Anna, then president of Mexico, who had rescinded the democratic Constitution of 1824 and dissolved Mexico''s Congress. In 1836 Santa Anna led Mexico troops into Texas, slaughtering the inhabitants of the Alamo on March 6. He won a second battle near Goliad, executing all prisoners. General Sam Houston, with an army of only 900 to Santa Anna''s 3,000-5,000, retreated...